The Role of the Press

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how advertising has affected the role that the media plays in our lives. The paper examines the affect that the market has on the effectiveness of mass media. Some of the different issues discussed are the evolution of many newspapers from family-owned, to corporate-owned, deregulation, changes in the laws and how advertising has affected the need to increase revenues and how the type of advertiser approached influences the content of the materials. The author presents information to illustrate how different publications or even television programs attract a certain audience and this influences the type of advertisements that are found. The author also feels that in some cases too much emphasis has been placed on advertising and revenue dollars generated and this is having a negative impact on the freedom that the media, especially the newspapers have in reporting events. The paper reviews some studies that have been conducted in order to support the theory that today's mass media is unduly influenced by the need to generate revenue through advertising and as a result the message that the public is receiving is also being influenced in a negative manner.

From the Paper:

"There are continual attempts to control the form and content of mass media. Deregulation of FCC limits on advertising time on radio and television in the 1980s fundamentally changed the nature of the mass media product that all of us are now served, and this deregulation came about because of very direct federal governmental (i.e. political) activity in the realm of mass media. Thus what seemed to be a political matter (the federal government wanted to reduce the level of regulation of as many industries as possible) was also very much an economic one (more minutes of advertising on radio and television shows meant that the marketplace "and individual companies" had more control over the content of television and radio programs."

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